The benefits of staying off social media • Hacker News Board

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#241

Post by watwut » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

hackernews777 wrote: post #210

kodah wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this track with human existence ? Most of my inbox is spam, even if I fight to control it. That doesn't mean I turn my email off or never use it. All of the activities you noted suck, but there's a lot more humans looking for something other than that. I ride my bike around town a lot and end up meeting a lot of strange people because of that. Some people think it's weird and obviously straight up other me if…

No it doesn't track with human existence. In the past such things lead to wars and large schisms in societies, it is completely abnormal for the vast majority of anything to be negative and the prevailing wisdom be just grin and bear it. The USA was founded on the idea of negative rights and an opt in culture, instead today we increasingly see a shift to people demanding positive rights and putting the burden on the…

Imo, this does not marches history of any place. It involved plenty of negativity.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#242

Post by watwut » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 8:15 PM UTC

stackbutterflow wrote: post #80

Isthatablackgsd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this won't happen unless something or someone takes actions. If governments is not going to bother to do the enforcement of the laws, then nothing changed until they do it. If there is a new player in the field, what or who is going to stop FAANGs from buying the competitors (even it violated the antitrust law)? Sure we do have Sherman Antitrust Act for this... but no one bothering to do the enforcement…

What prevented Oracle, IBM et al to buy out Google, Facebook and Twitter ? Yahoo refused to buy Google.

AFAIK, Zuckerberg was systematically refusing ton sell. He wanted to keep the company.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#243

Post by Domenic_S » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 8:16 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #238

Domenic_S wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No point triggering for the sake of it. Actually there is, if it's contextualized correctly. It's called Exposure Therapy [0] and it's scientifically proven to help phobias/anxiety/fears. Avoiding the anxiety-provoking situations makes things worse. [0] https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/exp...

Exposure therapy is not the same as randomly triggering the person. It is not going into situations where you will fail either. It is quite deliberate process where you expose person to dose the the person can handle with some difficulty and then you give them break to recover.

There are many strategies and pacing that exposure therapy can take (the link I provided has several examples); the slow, deliberate process you describe is one of them, as is what's being described upthread.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#244

Post by GDC7 » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 8:16 PM UTC

Domenic_S wrote: post #236

GDC7 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people would ever become accustomed to being losers. It might work for fear of flying or heights But being in a social setting and trying to penetrate into the "in crowd" and being rejected would only make things worse. You need a controlled environment to exogenously make the socially anxious person "in" so that they then have enough momentum and confidence to go out in the real world and go through an…

why are you equating social anxiety with being a loser?

Social anxiety spurs from not being popular or commanding a presence in a room, not being in the "in" crowd.

In short it spurs from not being a winner.

The socially anxious person maybe knows at the intellectual level that social wins can be achieved by working the numbers game, but they are too apathetic or nihlistic or scared that their first attempt is going to be a loss which will further depress them.

When you immerse the socially anxious person in a controlled environment you make sure that his first attempt is a Win, and the second and the third and the fourth etc.

And you make them win enough times that they maybe venture into hubris, so that they have a full tank to go into the real world and face the natural X amount of rejections and losses which comes before a win.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#245

Post by redisman » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 8:18 PM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #120

afavour wrote: post #43

Not to dispute anything the article says, but a reminder: Hacker News is social media too. Which is fine! But I often see comments on here (typically under any article about Facebook) where the poster says they’ve deleted all social media and their life is much better for it, etc etc. No you haven’t because you’re still on here. No problem with that as long as you’re getting value from the time you spend here, but it…

I guess HN is social media, but I don't think it's the kind of social media the article is talking about. There's no social network involved in HN, no identity or personal branding (outside of dang) and the user-generated content is mostly comments on articles generated outside the site. I'm not arguing that it isn't social media, but then I guess the comments section of a blog is also social media by the same defini…

I wish people would stop thinking it’s such a clever take. HN has chosen to leave out almost every engagement driving feature that modern social media is IMO defined by much more than just upvoting and commenting.

It’s social media in the same way my monthly pathetic run is professional sports.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#246

Post by trutannus » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 8:18 PM UTC

nobody9999 wrote: post #224

trutannus wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want to be around folks who want to be around me. And not all of those, either. This is a great distinction that I think a lot of people would be happier if they followed. Just because someone wants your time does not mean you have to, or even should, provide it to them. Wanting to spend time with you is a basic prerequisite, but is not the only criterion.

>This is a great distinction that I think a lot of people would be happier if they followed. Just because someone wants your time does not mean you have to, or even should, provide it to them. Wanting to spend time with you is a basic prerequisite, but is not the only criterion. I think there's another piece to that as well. Some people require more external validation than others. Those who do will seek out that val…

Definitely sounds like you're onto something there. For myself, external validation isn't something I need outside of my immediate family. So that could definitely play a role in how I view social media, and how I was so able to cut it off.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#247

Post by redisman » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 8:21 PM UTC

999900000999 wrote: post #8

>There are no amount of Twitter threads – or Instagram carousels – that will make you a better coder, manager, writer, or startup founder. You can only improve if you put the online tips you so passionately save into practice. I love this part, I noticed times when I'm heavily into social media and online dating I have significant career stagnation. I'm no longer building projects to help myself learn. Now that I'm s…

I found it also true for any engagement optimizing enterprise. News, Reddit /all, etc. are all just as bad at dumbing and numbing you down. It’s crazy how I’ve rediscovered things I used to enjoy before all the mindless browsing now that I’ve blocked basically every engagement driven website and app on all my devices

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#248

Post by watwut » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #187

tqi wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're all things you can do — provably — without social media. People who hold this opinion, when asked to define what counts as social media, will invariably draw the line based on "what do I like/dislike." Facebook, Snapchat: social media. HN, WhatsApp: not social media.

I'm not making that argument though. What I'm saying is, you can do all of those things (keeping up to date with friends, socializing, finding recipes, etc.) without social media. Indeed, without computers of any kind. The proof is that people did it for thousands of years before social media existed. If the argument is that you can do those things better with social media, my second point was that that hasn't turned…

> The proof is that people did it for thousands of years before social media existed.

That argument does not make sense. For "thousands years", you lived in small one room cabin with kids, grandparents and maybe even sibling there. You socialized, because there was no way to be alone.

Good luck finding people now willing to live with you that way.

No one will trade letters with you either. They expect you to communicate and socialize at places normal for contemporary society.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#249

Post by redisman » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #156

I would stay off social media too, as I did for years. I was a happy liberal. It was last year that changed my perspective. I found it was important to stay informed with channels outside of traditional media to know about politics, even though I had tried to stay away from politics or political news all my life. For instance, without social media, I wouldn't know that teachers in schools would tell my kids that they…

Wow sounds like you really got enlightened by all the right wing talking points they’re pushing on social media to get people enraged. Maybe try turning that off too and see how you feel in a month

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#250

Post by jcun4128 » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 8:28 PM UTC

I was more of an ass when I was younger. I cringe at myself on social media, I went through and cleaned it up, nothing offensive to anyone just cringe on my part. Anyway I did leave FB long time ago (recently use messenger for family), Instagram never really got into it same for Twitter, have some history while back.

I do still use social... HN/Reddit/YouTube/Imgur/some meme sites... usually I go on those when I'm burnt can't really be productive anymore.

Reddit more for fast questions like StackOverflow.

I don't have a ringer on my phone anymore, it's pretty cool. I'm not really important so it doesn't matter if I miss a call. It's easy for people to talk crap on social especially when they are anonymous. Gotta not get baited. Also numbers vs. real friends that will help you when life sucks. Comparing yourself to others that sucks too, there is always someone richer, better skilled, better looking, etc...

Lately too I have felt some self-censorship like "can I say that?" this is like political matters which I'm ignorant in so I avoid that, also not a confrontation guy... that's one thing that sucks about social media too you'll get annoyed by something and you'll obsess over it for a day.

I also try to avoid getting sucked into things like Twitch/Vtubers that's another form of social void filling.

I used to be super extroverted when I was younger but became the opposite later on, lost the hundreds of friends and now down to like 6 real friends.

One side anecdote, I used to do RC Planes hobby for fun... but then social media got involved. It was nice to be part of a community but there was that aspect where you were making content just to share with others vs. enjoying it for yourself. I do want to produce content in the long run but have to avoid that. Also ego-satisfaction, telling people about some fantasy/plans but it hasn't actually happened yet.